This application relates generally to biometrics. More specifically, this application relates to management of biometric information used in fraud-detection analyses for financial applications.
In recent years, there has been a steadily increasing emphasis on the potential for using biometrics to identify individuals reliably. Generally, “biometrics” refers to the use of statistical analysis to characterize living bodies, with such characteristics commonly being used to identify human individuals. Different physical features may be used for the characterization, with a widely known and conventional form of biometric being fingerprints. Other physical features that may be used for biometric functions include geometrical facial structures, structures of the iris or retina in eyes, geometrical structure of a person's hand, vein structure, voiceprints, and the like.
At the same time as biometrics have been developing in sophistication as potentially useful mechanisms for identifying individuals, there has also been a separate increase in various types of fraud, one example of which is the phenomenon of “identity theft,” in which a victim's identity is misappropriated and used fraudulently to gain access to the victim's financial affairs. The cost of fraud is large, not only in terms of the cumulative financial impact of the large number of instances that now routinely occur, but also in terms of its impact on victims.
The use of biometrics has been recognized as a potential way to limit the ability to engage in identity theft. This is because the biometric is ultimately tied to the physical characteristics of individuals, not to extraneous forms of identification. It is considerably more difficult to reproduce forgeries of biological characteristics than it is of paper documents, and certainly much more difficult to engage in their actual theft. Despite this recognition, there has been relatively little effort expended on integrating the use of biometric identifications into an infrastructure used in coordination financial transactions. There is accordingly a general need in the art for such integration.